universityinstitution of higher education, usually comprising a liberal arts and sciences college and graduate and professional schools and having the authority to confer degrees in various fields of study. A university differs from a college in that it is usually larger, has a broader curriculum, and offers graduate and professional degrees in addition to undergraduate degrees. (See also higher education.)

Early universities

The modern university evolved from the medieval schools known as studia generalia; they were generally recognized places of study open to students from all parts of Europe. The earliest studia arose out of efforts to educate clerks and monks beyond the level of the cathedral and monastic schools. The inclusion of scholars from foreign countries constituted the primary difference between the studia and the schools from which they grew.

The earliest Western institution that can be called a university was a famous medical school that arose at Salerno, Italy, in the 9th century and drew students from all over Europe. It remained merely a medical school, however. The first true university was founded at Bologna late in the 11th century. It became a widely respected school of canon and civil law. The first university to arise in northern Europe was the University of Paris, founded between 1150 and 1170. It became noted for its teaching of theology, and it served as a model for other universities in northern Europe such as the University of Oxford in England, which was well established by the end of the 12th century. The universities of Paris and Oxford were composed of colleges, which were actually endowed residence halls for scholars. (See college.)

These early universities were corporations of students and masters, and they eventually received their charters from popes, emperors, and kings. The University of Naples, founded by Emperor Frederick II (1224), was the first to be established under imperial authority, while the University of Toulouse, founded by Pope Gregory IX (1229), was the first to be established by papal decree. These universities were free to govern themselves, provided they taught neither atheism nor heresy. Students and masters together elected their own rectors (presidents). As the price of independence, however, universities had to finance themselves. So teachers charged fees, and, to assure themselves of a livelihood, they had to please their students. These early universities had no permanent buildings and little corporate property, and they were subject to the loss of dissatisfied students and masters who could migrate to another city and establish a place of study there. The history of the University of Cambridge began in 1209 when a number of disaffected students moved there from Oxford; and 20 years later Oxford profited by a migration of students from the University of Paris.

From the 13th century on universities were established in many of the principal cities of Europe. Universities were founded at Montpellier (beginning of the 13th century) and Aix-en-Provence (1409) in France, at Padua (1222), Rome (1303), and Florence (1321) in Italy, at Salamanca (1218) in Spain, at Prague (1348) and Vienna (1365) in central Europe, at Heidelberg (1386), Leipzig (1409), Freiburg (1457), and Tübingen (1477) in what is now Germany, at Louvain (1425) in present-day Belgium, and at Saint Andrews (1411) and Glasgow (1451) in Scotland.

Until the end of the 18th century, most universities offered a core curriculum based on the seven liberal arts: grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. Students then proceeded to study under one of the professional faculties of medicine, law, and theology. Final examinations were grueling, and many students failed.

Impact of the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation on European universities

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and the ensuing Counter-Reformation affected the universities of Europe in different ways. In the German states, new Protestant universities were founded and older schools were taken over by Protestants, while many Roman Catholic universities became staunch defenders of the traditional learning associated with the Catholic church. By the 17th century, both Protestant and Catholic universities had become overly devoted to defending correct religious doctrines and hence remained resistant to the new interest in science that had begun to sweep through Europe. The new learning was discouraged, and thus many universities underwent a period of relative decline. New schools continued to be founded during this time, however, including ones at Edinburgh (1583), Leiden (1575), and Strasbourg (university status, 1621).

The first modern university was that of Halle, founded by Lutherans in 1694. This school was one of the first to renounce religious orthodoxy of any kind in favour of rational and objective intellectual inquiry, and it was the first where teachers lectured in German (i.e., a vernacular language) rather than in Latin. Halle’s innovations were adopted by the University of Göttingen (founded 1737) a generation later and subsequently by most German and many American universities.

In the later 18th and 19th centuries religion was gradually displaced as the dominant force as European universities became institutions of modern learning and research and were secularized in their curriculum and administration. These trends were typified by the University of Berlin (1809), in which laboratory experimentation replaced conjecture; theological, philosophical, and other traditional doctrines were examined with a new rigour and objectivity; and modern standards of academic freedom were pioneered. The German model of the university as a complex of graduate schools performing advanced research and experimentation proved to have a worldwide influence.

First universities in the Western Hemisphere

The first universities in the Western Hemisphere were established by the Spaniards: the University of Santo Domingo (1538) in what is now the Dominican Republic and the University of Michoacán (1539) in Mexico. The earliest American institutions of higher learning were the four-year colleges of Harvard (1636), William and Mary (1693), Yale (1701), Princeton (1746), and King’s College (1754; now Columbia). Most early American colleges were established by religious denominations, and most eventually evolved into full-fledged universities. One of the oldest universities in Canada is that at Toronto, chartered as King’s College in 1827.

As the frontier of the United States moved westward, hundreds of new colleges were founded. American colleges and universities tended to imitate German models, seeking to combine the Prussian ideal of academic freedom with the native tradition of educational opportunity for the many. The growth of such schools in the United States was greatly spurred by the Morrill Act of 1862, which granted each state tracts of land with which to finance new agricultural and mechanical schools. Many “land-grant colleges” arose from this act, and there developed among these the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and the state universities of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. (See land-grant college.)

Reorganization, secularization, and modernization in the 19th and 20th centuries

Several European nations in the 19th century reorganized and secularized their universities, notably Italy (1870), Spain (1876), and France (1896). Universities in these and other European countries became mostly state-financed. Women began to be admitted to universities in the second half of the 19th century. Meanwhile, universities’ curricula also continued to evolve. The study of modern languages and literatures was added to, and in many cases supplanted, the traditional study of Latin, Greek, and theology. Such sciences as physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering achieved a recognized place in curricula, and by the early 20th century the newer disciplines of economics, political science, psychology, and sociology were also taught.

In the late 19th and 20th centuries Great Britain and France established universities in many of their colonies in South and Southeast Asia and Africa. Most of the independent nations that emerged from these colonies in the mid-20th century expanded their university systems along the lines of their European or American models, often with major technical and economic assistance from former colonial rulers, industrialized nations, and international agencies such as the World Bank. Universities in Japan, China, and Russia also evolved in response to pressures for modernization. In India, some preindependence universities, such as Banaras Hindu University (1916) and Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva-Bharati (1921), were founded as alternatives to Western educational principles. The state universities of Moscow (1755) and St. Petersburg (1819) are long-established institutions that have retained their preeminence in Russia. Tokyo (1877) and Kyōto (1897) universities are the most prestigious ones in Japan, as is Peking University (1898) in China.

Modern universities

Modern universities may be financed by national, state, or provincial governments, or they may depend largely on tuition fees paid by their students. The typical modern residential university may enroll 20,000 or more students and educate both undergraduates and graduate students in the entire range of the arts and humanities, mathematics, the social sciences, the physical, biological, and earth sciences, and various fields of technology. Nonresidential, virtual, and open universities, some of which are modeled after Britain’s Open University (1969), may enroll 100,000 or more students, who pursue both degree-credit and noncredit courses of study. Universities are the main providers of graduate-level training in most professional fields.